The Lunar Trailblazer was a small satellite with a mission to orbit the moon and map sources of water. The intent was to get solid data on potential water resources to guide future exploration. The mission was overseen by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and led by the private research university, the California Institute of Technology.
Caltech’s Lunar Trailblazer principal investigator, Bethany Ehlmann, told JPL, “Making high-resolution measurements of the type and amount of lunar water will help us understand the lunar water cycle, and it will provide clues to other questions, like how and when did Earth get its water.” She went on to explain, “But understanding the inventory of lunar water is also important if we are to establish a sustained human and robotic presence on the Moon and beyond.”
Lunar Trailblazer launched on February 26, 2025 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After one day, however, contact was lost with it. Despite widespread efforts to re-establish contact and try to save it, the mission officially ended on July 31, 2025.
Why NASA ended the Lunar Trailblazer mission
Lunar Trailblazer launched with the Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission (IM-2), though the two had their own separate objectives. Just shy of an hour after launch, the Lunar Trailblazer split from IM-2 and headed toward the moon. Everything appeared to be working fine; however, communication was lost the next day.
What the science team could deduce was that Lunar Trailblazer’s batteries depleted due to the solar arrays not picking up enough sunlight for power, likely due to improper positioning while in space. From the day after launch through July, a global effort was made to attempt to track and reconnect with the orbiter. This led to the discovery that it was spinning further off into space and beyond the point of recovery.
Lunar Trailblazer was part of NASA’s SIMPLEx program, which stands for Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration. These are opportunities for spacecraft that have a low cost to hitch rides with primary missions, but they are inherently higher risk, have less oversight, and fewer approvals to go through. The low cost is a relative term, of course, because Lunar Trailblazer was valued at a $94.1 million total lifetime cost.
The ongoing efforts of lunar missions
Though the loss of Lunar Trailblazer is sad, there are still two current lunar missions being overseen by NASA. The Lunar Flashlight is another small satellite that launched on December 11, 2022. Its mission is to map ice near the moon’s south pole. It’s also managed by JPL and is another low-cost mission.
The Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment launched on June 18, 2009 with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Its mission is to measure the moon’s surface temperatures (we already have a good idea what’s inside it). It has already provided great data to NASA and has also been helping to search for water on the moon.
The associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA’s Washington headquarters, Nicky Fox, said in a statement, “At NASA, we undertake high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to find revolutionary ways of doing new science.” She went on to say, “While it was not the outcome we had hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help us to learn and reduce the risk for future, low-cost small satellites to do innovative science as we prepare for a sustained human presence on the Moon. Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication in working on and learning from this mission through to the end.”
